


Deserted

by sunbeamsky



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Gen, Martha Blackburn Needs a Hug, marty notices the other girls pairing off and feels lonely, so she takes out of her anger on toni, these two have been through so much and they deserve all the best, toni doesn't really get it...until she does, toni shalifoe needs a hug, trouble in platonic paradise?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28534713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbeamsky/pseuds/sunbeamsky
Summary: Toni closed her mouth and Martha didn’t let herself notice the tears falling down her best friend’s cheeks. Toni stood up, sniffled, and walked away. Martha felt like breaking. She felt like screaming. She felt like Toni.or the one where we explore the ups and downs of Martha and Toni's friendship.
Relationships: Martha Blackburn & Toni Shalifoe
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	Deserted

When Martha woke up, she was utterly alone. Not alone in the way that she felt on the witness’ stand at Hopewell Town Hall, or the alone she felt when she scrolled through pictures of happy couples and happy-go-lucky girls posed in front of a sunset. None of that could compare to the isolation and helplessness rippling through her skin when she realized her foot was stuck between two rocks, that there was a strong possibility she survived a plane crash just to drown. 

The plane crash was still such a blur. They were playing Shelby’s game, she got some cake in her teeth, and then suddenly the lights were flashing and Toni was bolting across the jet and into Martha’s arms. Everybody always said that all people will die alone, but Martha had Toni—clung to her as Toni cried against her hair. She wasn’t alone.

Martha couldn’t remember the crash itself, maybe because the cabin lost oxygen or maybe because Martha’s natural instincts were to black out the memories too painful to nourish. She remembered Shelby, kind and thoughtful and tying her ripped up shirt around Martha, stabilizing her as they found their way to Toni. 

It was always going to be Toni that they found first. It had to be. Toni was the first person to jump to Martha’s side every day, every minute, since they met in the first grade. Toni made sure Martha’s world was filled with rainbows and sunshine, and Martha made sure Toni felt safe from the bigots and shitty adults in her life. They had each other, which was why when Martha woke up on her own in the waves, she felt the most isolated she ever had. 

They had each other’s backs for a while. Back when they thought rescue was on its way, that life was taking a brief pause but would pick back up and they would all continue on. Martha knew that most people thought her naïve, but it had been comforting to indulge in the fantasy of being rescued. Of seeing her parents again. Sure, there was shit better to be buried in Minnesota, but she had so much she loved from home too. 

Most of the other girls didn’t dream about going home. They dreamt of leaving the island, certainly, but not of returning home to their lives. Martha dreamt of helping her mom in the garden and dancing in the heat of the summer. She thought about school and finding a nice boy who would ask her to prom with flowers or chocolates. She thought of moving into a two-bedroom apartment with Toni and about the curtains they would buy, covered in dragonflies and crawling vines. There was so much more Martha wanted to do. 

Perhaps it was the naivety, but she had always pictured doing a lot of those things with Toni. 

But they fought on the island, in a way they never had back home—Martha used to call it the ‘real world,’ but the island was just as real now, if not more so. Toni couldn’t break things on the island the way she did at home. They didn’t have enough resources, enough energy, to bring her down from her spirals, no olive branches to lend. And Toni couldn’t take advantage of her like that, not when Martha gave everything she had to everybody. She was the only one who refused to turn on somebody else, to cause anyone any more suffering. 

And she loved Toni, more than the world she did, but they were drifting. Toni gravitated to Shelby now, leaned on her for comfort, for release. Nora and Rachel were getting along better, so she felt the distance between herself and Nora growing as the days numbered. Leah was so deep in her paranoia that Martha had always found it hard to get close to her. Fatin and Dot were glued at the hip, bickering like an old married couple as they literally planned their life together. 

This time, sitting between her little family of seven, Martha truly realized how alone she was. She could almost reach other and feel the distance she had put between herself and everybody else. She was the only one without a hand to hold, without a tear to shed. Martha was on her own. 

She mad, when she said it. Truly angry, which was a rarity for Martha. 

“That’s not true,” she whispered, loud enough for all to hear but quiet enough that Toni knew the comment was directed at her. Toni’s brows furrowed and a familiar tenseness washed over her. “It’s not true and you know it.”

They were all sitting by the fire, their nightly—and often daily—routine. Martha was in charge of keeping the fire going tonight and let it consume her focus so she didn’t have to participate as much in the conversation. It was one of Shelby’s slumber party games. They had been fun at first, an easy way to get to know each other and take their minds off their starvation. Now, it was a whole lot of the same. Nothing but sex and bitterness about the lives they had left behind. Martha got it. She did. But she had also had enough of it. 

“It is true though, Marty,” Toni retorted, firmly as distance grew between her voice and her emotions. It was Toni’s tell. She always tried to bottle up her emotions, but the girl was an open book. “I don’t have fucking shit to go back to.”

“My family isn’t fucking shit,” Martha practically hissed, harsher than she had ever spoken to another person in her life. Toni should have known better. 

“I never said that!”

“You insinuated it.”

“I didn’t fucking mean it like that! You know I love you.”

_Did she? Still?_

“Marty.” Softer this time. 

Everybody was watching and Martha felt near tears so she stood up, brushed the sand off her shorts, and walked away. Her mother had always taught her to do so when she felt anger overtaking her. Walk away, take a breath, think about how to make things okay. She couldn’t make things okay, not on the island. Not all by herself. 

“Go away,” she grumbled, still stuck in her fumes, when Toni approached. She knew it was Toni without turning around to see, she would know that crunch of wet sand and huffing of breath anywhere. Martha dug her feet into the sand as the tide poured salt water up to her knees and then washed back into the sea. Toni took a seat next to her, with too much space between them to feel like a comfort. 

“I’m sorry, Marty,” she whispered, a trembling catch in her voice that made Martha’s heart skip. Her instincts fought for forgiveness, but Martha was feeling at home in the angry pit in her stomach. 

“I know.”

“I love you and I love your parents, you know that. I just, well. I mean, shit, you know what my life is like. It’s easier here… for me. Sometimes,” Toni rambled, playing with the sand the way she always did when she was nervous. Back home, Martha would flip the switch inside of her, take her breath and her moment, and then fixed the situation. She would have made everything okay. 

“I know you do.”

“Does that mean you’ll forgive me, then?” Toni asked, a bit cheeky. 

“That’s not why I’m upset,” she admitted, because Martha didn’t have it in her to lie to Toni. 

“What’s going on then?” Toni asked, pulling her knees between her elbows and then resting her chin on them, watching Martha attentively. “Did I do something?”

Martha shrugged. Yes. No. 

“You know I’m happy for you, right?” Martha asked. 

“For me and Shelby?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“…But?”

“I’m happy for all of you. Everybody has grown so much since she got here, including me. I know we’re all going to come out of this better people.”

“I hope so too,” Toni agreed softly, still listening to see where Martha was going with all of it. 

Martha was quiet for a minute, maybe even two. Toni waited silently for her to speak. Martha waited to see what words would come tumbling out of her mouth. 

“Remember when we first got here?”

Toni nodded. 

“And you got all jealous of Shelby and I?”

Toni nodded again, this time with a roll of her eyes. 

“I get it now.”

“Marty,” Toni sighed, reaching out for Martha’s hand. 

“Not of you and Shelby. Not specifically at least. But of all of you.”

“How so?”

“You’re all so happy,” Martha whispered, feeling immensely vulnerable but needing to get her feelings off her chest. 

“It’s nothing to be jealous of Martha. We’re happy because our lives are so fucked up, that being on a deserted island feels like a vacation. I’m jealous that you actually have a good life to get back to.”

“You’re part of that, though,” Martha added, feeling the anger bubbling in her stomach again as Toni started to rebuild the wall between them. “You keep talking about our lives as if they’re separate. As if we won’t go back to Minnesota together. To my house. To my bedroom!”

“Just because we’re best friends doesn’t mean we’re living one life.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings Martha, but you live in a fantasy land if you really believe that your parents are going to let me sleep on your bedroom floor forever. What happens when my mom gets out of rehab? What happens when you move out one day? Our lives are always going to be our own.”

Martha bit down on her bottom lip so hard she could feel the skin break. 

“Well, I’m sorry if I consider you a really big part of my life.”

“Marty, I—”

“You don’t have to say anything else. Not right now.”

“But—”

“I want to be alone.”

Toni closed her mouth and Martha didn’t let herself notice the tears falling down her best friend’s cheeks. Toni stood up, sniffled, and walked away. Martha felt like breaking. She felt like screaming. She felt like Toni.

**Author's Note:**

> i love martha and toni's friendship and they have so many unresolved issues and that i want resolved. so i guess i'm gonna have to resolve them myself. any who, enjoy the angsty intro chapter and hope you enjoy this as much as my shoni fics :)


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